Embracing the Wild in Your Dog

Introduction

To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your soul. 

Just be sure something you want to view is there.

~ Iroquois saying

Ranger, my seven-year-old, male, Alaskan sled dog, is lying on the frozen ground chewing a stick when Scarlett, a new twelve-week-old female pup, cautiously noses up to him to investigate what he is chewing. Her inquiry is met immediately with a hard, deliberate stare that is accompanied by a low, menacing growl. Like an echo from a distant time when all aggression was sparked by competition for survival, Ranger’s growl leaves no doubt as to the outcome if Scarlett fails to heed his warning.

Perhaps Scarlett has been deficiently socialized to powerful, dominant males such as Ranger, or perhaps up until this moment in life, she has always taken what she has wanted, but whatever the reason, she fails to retreat in the speed and manner required to avoid an attack. With an imperceptible speed, Ranger springs up and snatches Scarlett by the throat and pins her to the ground. Suddenly, finding herself the replacement for the stick in Ranger’s mouth, Scarlett flails and howls with every ounce of strength that her twelve weeks of life can bring to bear. Escape is not possible.

If I do not wish to share, I won’t! is the lesson, and the teacher is a domestic wolf named Ranger. Drawing from a lesson plan created thousands of years ago by nature for the use of social predators, Ranger indoctrinates Scarlett on the way of the wolf where dominance prevails and submission yields. The force of his teeth on her neck does not crush her. His formidable muzzle chokes off her air, but he does not suffocate her. Ranger holds Scarlett firmly, pinned on her back, until she relinquishes her fight and becomes still. I am Ranger, and to you, young one, my will is law. Yield to me, is said through the eyes of the unconquerable wolf that reigns in the heart of Ranger and in all domestic dogs. Then, he releases her.

The use of aggression to assert his will and to teach a valuable lesson to Scarlett would have horrified most pet owners, and Ranger would have most likely been punished for his unacceptable behavior while Scarlett would have been doted on for her near death experience. Worse yet, Scarlett may not have been allowed to be in the company of Ranger again for fear of her safety, and this action would have denied her access to the many important lessons that Ranger would have provided her in the future.

We humans would have intervened when nature would have acknowledged. We would have suppressed what nature would have blossomed. Like so many other things we do, we would have tried to change the unchangeable because we are human, and we are all powerful, and, unfortunately, we are all ignorant. Ranger’s employment of an aggressive mechanism while maintaining control of his stick was as natural to him as your brushing your teeth. In his world, the world of wolves, his aggression was not only justifiable but also necessary to accomplish his inherited duty of educating and protecting the offspring of his species. Because we do not know or because we simply refuse to acknowledge that dogs’ behaviors are more wolf-like than we wish them to be, we have endowed dogs with the same moral consciousness and rules of conduct that we would expect of ourselves and other decent humans. We would have shared our stick with Scarlett and would have expected her to share hers with us if she had one. We would not have kept our stick to ourselves like Ranger. We would have treated her like any other member of our family and would not have discriminated against her desire to achieve an equal status with us. We would not have pinned her to the ground like Ranger to emphasize our power and our authority over her. We would have taught her to ask, not take; too question, not yield; to assert, not submit. And sadly, there tips the first domino that leads to a relational discord with our dogs. They’re not humans, and they should not be treated like humans.

This is not a training book. However, I can’t imagine attempting to properly train a dog without knowing the information presented in this book.  It does not cover obedience topics such as heel, sit, down, stay, and come.  Instead, it is about my growing up in the Alaskan wild under the tutelage and guardianship of a Special Forces survival instructor who introduced me to the ways of wolves and the similarities they share with dogs. It is about the wisdom and splendor of nature and the many life lessons she provides. Mostly, it is about developing a deep understanding of the authors of your dog’s behavior—nature and the wolf. In doing so, you will truly learn who and what your dog really is and the whys and hows of its behavior. You will learn the tools that nature gave your dog to survive and coexist in both the wild and in your home. You will learn how activating and deactivating natural impulses and mechanisms in your dog will lead to the harmonious existence and the control you always dreamed of. Lastly, you will come to know the wolf in your dog and accept it for the wonderful gift that it is.

Lessons from the Wild

If a man is as wise as a serpent,

he can afford to be as harmless as a dove.

~ Cheyenne Proverb

Do you know what you’re looking at? my mentor asks as he stands looking over my shoulder. Wolf prints? I answer timidly because I still had trouble differentiating between wolf and wolverine tracks.

Yep. How many wolves left these prints? he questions. Now he is squatting next to me, perfectly balanced on his snowshoes even though he is supporting a fifty-pound pack on his back. I’m not sure, I reply, knowing that’s not the answer my mentor is looking for, but it’s the truth. Telling the truth will earn me a lesser penalty than if I just make up a number.

Not sure? Not sure doesn’t work out here in the wild. Not sure gets you killed. Only being sure works, and being sure about how many wolves are near us is important.I’m going to go back over our trail a bit while you figure out how many wolves left these tracks. When you ARE SURE, let me know, he commands. With that, he taps me on my shoulder and heads back down the trail from which we had come.

As a young lad in Alaska, my introduction to wilderness survival and navigating the wild was not with the Boy Scouts but with my mentor, a U.S. Army Green Beret. Having been blessed with only two daughters, he took me under his wing, and I became the son he always wanted. Under his tutelage, weather patterns, terrain, foliage, animal behavior, and survival equipment were all broken down to their most basic forms and taught to me. He was a lean, muscular man with a square jaw and steel, gray eyes that never missed any mistake I made. The wild was his home, and he fit so perfectly in it that if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he had been born from mountain rock and suckled by a wolf. He was as mean as a wounded moose when he needed to be but as loving and protecting as a she-bear to her cubs at other times. He was Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Charles Bronson all wrapped up in one man. He was my hero, and I wanted nothing more than to be just like him.

Alaska is well known for her cold winters, and today is no exception. The bitter cold is playing havoc with my ability to concentrate. I keep catching myself trying to figure out how many usable toes and fingers I still have instead of how many wolves have traveled through the area. The days are also very short in the winter, and a quick glance at the horizon tells me I don’t have much longer to solve my mentor’s question.

I know the first part of the equation is to determine the speed of the wolves. Not only is my mentor sure to ask me this question, but the faster the wolves ran, the easier it was to count them.

Because nature at her most basic form is an exchange of energy for more energy, wolves usually travel at an energy-conserving trot, not at a gallop. While trotting, wolves leave an alternating track pattern where the hind leg’s paw print often lands on top of the opposite front leg’s paw print. This makes discerning the tracks of three or four wolves traveling together a cinch, but with wolves usually traveling in a single file while trotting, any number greater than this can almost be impossible to tell. However, in a gallop, such as what wolves use while chasing prey, the number of wolves is easier to tell because the wolves usually break off the disciplined single file trot line and fan out. This strategic move creates individual tracks that make it easy for a tracker to not only know how many wolves are involved in the hunt but also to know their approximate size and hierarchal status among the group. Even if the wolves do not fan out, the speed of some of the wolves will be greater than the others, and centrifugal force will push them off the established single file line to create individual tracks. I know this for a fact because this had to be compensated for when my dogs pulled my sled; otherwise, a crash was almost certain.

It doesn’t take me long to figure out that lady luck isn’t going to bless me with a group of galloping wolves today. These wolves are traveling single file, and there are layers and layers of tracks on top of tracks, meaning my most accurate hypothesis is not going to be a specific number but a bunch of wolves instead. I know I am going to receive a butt-chewing from my mentor, but trying to look on the bright side, I figure if he makes me do a hundred push-ups with my pack on for not getting the answer right, it will at least warm me up. Rationalizing that there is no need to prolong the inevitable, I set off down the trail to report the bad news to my mentor.

I had traveled far enough without finding my mentor to start wondering if he had decided to leave me out here on my own. It wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if he had because he’d chosen to do so a few times before as a way of testing my ability to remain calm and get myself out of a precarious situation. On one particular occasion, we had driven over thirty kilometers from the base where we both lived and then had trekked another ten more into the wild when my mentor told me he needed to relieve himself. With that, he left me where I was and disappeared behind a stand of trees. Everything my mentor did was fast, including what he was doing then, so after about fifteen minutes when he hadn’t reappeared, I became a little concerned and went looking for him. Behind the stand of trees, I did not find my mentor, but I did find a note tacked to one of the low hanging branches. It said, See you back home. At least he thought enough to pull that one on me during the summer!

What did you find out? I hear as I about jump out of my skin. The man has an uncanny way of materializing out of nowhere, and I had still not gotten used to it. Watching him step out from behind a spruce tree, I answer, I tried my best, sir, but I can’t tell you exactly how many. They were trotting in a single file line, and there were tracks covering up tracks everywhere! But, I do know because of that, it has to be more than you can shake a stick at. I give it to him straight. Heck, I’m so cold I figure, what is a little more misery going to do to me?

So, approximately how many wolves do you figure you would be shaking that stick at? he asks as he snaps a small branch off the tree he’s standing next to. Pruning the branch until it’s bare, he hands it to me and asks, "What’syour best guess?" This doesn’t help me a bit. History has proven to me that when my mentor gives me permission to guess at something, it’s like navigating through a minefield. Some answers provide clear passage while others blow up in my face. Geez, how can someone be so good at torture? My best guess would be six to eight wolves, sir. Now it’s time to find out if I live or die.

Good guess. There are actually eight of them, and they’re headed northwest of our location on a hunt, he replies, grinning. Well, at least I’m not going to die from something other than the cold, but, before I can celebrate, I surprise myself and ask him, How in the world did you figure that out? I’m amazed at both my brazenness for asking a master of the wild how he knows what he knows and the fact that he did know what he knew! I can definitely chalk this one up to a self-inflicted wound.

"Follow me, and I’ll show